Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife,
Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second
Republic, 1918-1947

For 123 years, Poles lived under Russian, Prussian, or
Austro-Hungarian rule. During World War I, all three of these
imperialist empires collapsed. Seizing an opportunity, the Poles
declared independence on 11 November 1918. A plethora of daunting
problems immediately confronted the war-ravaged Second Republic of
Poland. Author Tadeusz Piotrowski posits that along with a struggling
economy, two problems above all others would ultimately contribute to
Poland's holocaust in World War II: Poland's borders and Poland's
sizeable minorities.

By 1921, after a series of armed conflicts with neighboring
states, Polish borders were finalized. Although the process resulted
in territorial gains, especially in the east, it also fostered much
hostility and open resentment both within and outside Poland. Besides
the enmity of Germany and the Soviet Union, Poland was forced to
contend with rising minority discontent. As Piotrowski points out,
'the political objectives of all radical nationalists were, after
all, separatist.' (5) Thus, the yearnings for an independent 'greater
Ukraine,' a reunited Belarus or a Jewish state within the Polish one
smoldered relentlessly. When war erupted in 1939, 'the radical
members of these minorities, rather than supporting Poland in its
hour of need, chose to side with the enemy and vied with one another
in their support of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, hoping thereby
to achieve their objectives at Polish expense.' (6)

Continuing along the lines of his previous work on interwar
Poland, Polish-Ukrainian relations and Ukrainian nationalism, Tadeusz
Piotrowski presents a detailed examination of collaboration with the
Soviet and Nazi occupation forces of the ethnic minorities living
mainly in the eastern provinces of pre-World War II Poland.

The first two chapters, titled 'Soviet Terror' and 'Nazi Terror,'
provide a brief overview of Poland's subjugation. Zones of occupation
and their ethnic composition are likewise discussed, as are Soviet
and Nazi occupation policies and practices. Citing a comprehensive
list of Soviet crimes and misdeeds, from the Katyn massacre to the
1945 Moscow show trial of sixteen kidnapped political leaders of the
Polish underground, Piotrowski argues that from the very beginning,
it was Stalin's aim to ensure that an independent Poland would never
reemerge in the postwar period. The prisons, ghettos, internment,
transit, labor and extermination camps, roundups, mass deportations,
public executions, mobile killing units, death marches, deprivation,
hunger, disease, and exposure all testify to the 'inhuman policies of
both Hitler and Stalin' and 'were clearly aimed at the total
extermination of Polish citizens, both Jews and Christians. Both
regimes endorsed a systematic program of genocide.' (32) Such
large-scale operations needed helpers. As a final segment to this
preliminary examination, Piotrowski defines 'collaborator' and
'accomplice' to mean voluntary complicity with the Soviets or Germans
for the express purpose of destroying Poland, its citizens, or its
underground Home Army. He reminds the reader that collaborators were
only a small percentage of Poland's 35 million pre-war citizens, but
because of their cooperation with Soviet or Nazi forces, over six
million Polish citizens were murdered, both Jews and Christiansall of
them, he reiterates, victims of Poland's Holocaust.

As a self-described 'naturalized American citizen of Polish
descent who happens to be a sociologist,' Professor Piotrowski
teaches Sociology of the Holocaust at the University of New
Hampshire. He broadens the scope of the term 'Holocaust' to include
all Polish citizens who were murdered as a result of both Nazi and
Soviet genocidal policies and practices. Although the Jewish
exclusivity of the Holocaust is generally accepted, this
comprehensive approach offers a broader and more accurate account,
lending itself to a deeper understanding of an extremely complicated
period. As the book demonstrates, the ethnocentric goals of
collaborators meant a death sentence for ordinary Polish citizens.
Also, with the ebb and flow of Soviet and Nazi forces over Poland's
eastern territories, loyalties often switched back and forth in order
to insure the fulfillment of various political agendas.

All aspects of collaboration by Jews, Poles, Belarusians,
Lithuanians, and Ukrainians on Polish soil are painstakingly
presented in their own densely packed chapters. Piotrowski's
narrative tells the story of complicity through eyewitness
testimonies, memoirs, diaries, military field reports, periodicals,
hundreds of secondary sources as well as his own insights and
interpretations. The book does an excellent job of integrating
scholarship on the subject, much of it of recent vintage. Almost one
hundred pages of notes provide much more than mere citations. Besides
15 tables within the text, ten tables illustrating population losses
and deportations appear in Piotrowski's text; it also includes a
discussion between scholars over the intent of the Polish Home Army
General Bor-Komorowski's Order No. 116was it aimed against Jewish
partisans or against bandits, some of whom may have been
Jewish?1 As detailed as the notes and text are, the book
assumes some background knowledge; for example, the positions of
major personalities, such as Józef Beck or Jozef Pilsudski,
are not explained on first mention, nor is the 30 July 1941
Sikorski-Maisky agreement. Such instances are rare and ultimately do
not detract from the presentation. The Appendix with thirteen
documents (e.g., the 1919 Minorities Treaty, the NKVD Instructions
Relating to 'Anti-Soviet Elements,' Beria's letter to Stalin on the
execution of thousands of Polish prisoners of war, and the UB
[Soviet-controlled Communist Security Police] chronology of the
Kielce Pogrom released in 1989) are included along with four maps,
although sites mentioned do not always appear on the maps. The
Bibliography is extensive and state-of-the-art, but its full value
might be limited to those who read Polish or Ukrainian. The Index is
excellent; particularly good are the cross references. Finally, the
copy editor and proofreader deserve credit for a virtually flawless
text.

Each chapter seems designed to stand on its own, closes with an
assessment of responsibility and fixes blame squarely on those who
colluded with the enemy to the detriment of the Polish state and the
Polish people.

The chapter on Jewish collaboration is provocative, yet it has
important implications for Polish-Jewish relations and the
historiography of the Holocaust. Acknowledging the existence of
anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland, ranging from benign to murderous,
but never state-sponsored before and during the war, Piotrowski
questions its causes and its extent. Part of the responsibility, he
argues, 'must surely rest on the shoulders of the Jews themselves.'
(36) In the interest of truth and fairness, he asserts that 'to
single out and humiliate Poland for its real or manufactured
anti-Semitism is, therefore, grossly unfair.' (38) His aim is not to
excuse or justify wrongdoing, but to give a full accounting of
circumstances surrounding events which have poisoned Polish-Jewish
relations and led unjustly to blanket charges of Polish
anti-Semitism.

Among the factors which negatively affected perceptions and
experiences are Jewish ethnocentrism and aloofness; limited contact
with Poles due to voluntary isolationism; failure to assimilate;
unfulfilled political expectations; immigration of persecuted Jews
from Nazi Germany to pre-war Poland; and socioeconomic conflicts.
Addressing the correlation between the deterioration of Polish-Jewish
relations and the Soviet invasions of Poland in 1919-1920, 1939-1941,
and 1944-1945, the author states that 'some Polish Jews became
co-participants in the Soviet reigns of terror.' (36) It is
significant that Poles in the eastern provinces vividly recall Jews
kissing Soviet tanks in 1939 and, as survivors, again in 1944. Many
Poles were victims of Jewish-Soviet collaboration, targeted as they
were for deportation or execution by lists drawn up partially by
Jews. The author demonstrates that Jewish communists within the
Soviet apparatus were quite numerous and visible in 1944-1948,
holding key positions at the national and local levels. It is not
hard to imagine how this situation affected Polish sensibilities. To
explain is not to justify nor excuse, but serves to illuminate human
failings on all sides. To bring the picture back into balance, noting
that life was often difficult for Polish Jews, Piotrowski readily
admits that the overwhelming majority of Jews were not communists,
nor did they side with either the Soviets or the Nazis. However,
during the Nazi occupation, some Jews were willing collaborators and
the remainder of the chapter on Jewish collaboration decribes their
role in the Polish Holocaust.

The chapter 'Polish Collaboration' under Soviet and Nazi
occupation might be familiar material to some, yet Piotrowski does
much to strip away the myths surrounding these terrible times. He
questions the accuracy

of the often repeated allegations that the Polish underground,
including the Home Army, were guilty of collaboration with the Nazis
and of committing anti-Semitic atrocities. One treatment of this
question focuses on the events at the shtetl of Ejszyszki (now
in Lithuania), an alleged 1944 pogrom near Wilno [Vilnius]. On 3
April 1995, an article defaming Poles in that connection appeared in
the U.S. News & World Report. It was followed up with an
extensive piece in the New York Times on 6 August 1996.
Piotrowski also deals with the activities of the Polish National
Armed Forces (Narodowe Sily Zbrojne), a right-wing military
organization which aligned itself, for the most part, with the Home
Army in early 1944, but was never under its control. The chapter
continues by relating the Soviet attempts to liquidate the Home Army,
the assistance given to the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, the role of the
Polish 'Blue' Police in the murders of Jews, civilian complicity,
Polish assistance to the Jews, and the post-World War II years.

In his final chapter, Piotrowski examines Soviet and Nazi
involvement with Ukrainian nationalists to explain how the policy of
ethnic cleansing in Western Ukraine evolved and was carried out.
Based on personal recollections and recent scholarship, Piotrowski
brings to light a grim period of savage barbarity, one to which most
English-only readers have not yet been exposed.

Overall, this book makes a valuable contribution to several fields
of study. Students of the Holocaust, of wartime collaboration, of
Polish, Central European and Russian history will be well served by
Piotrowski's volume.

1 General Bor-Komorowski's Order reads as
follows:

Well-armed gangs ramble endlessly in cities and villages,
attack estates, banks, commercial and industrial companies, houses
and apartments, and larger peasant farms. The plunder is often
accompanied by acts of murder which are carried out by Soviet
partisan units hiding in the forests or by ordinary gangs of robbers.
The latter recruit from all kinds of criminal subversive
elements.

Men and women, especially Jewish women, participate in the
assaults. This infamous action of demoralized individuals contributes
in a considerable degree to the complete destruction of many citizens
who have already been tormented with the four year struggle against
the enemy.

The [German] occupier has not basically opposed the existing
state of affairs. When German security organs are sometimes called
in, in the more serious instances, they refuse to help, avoiding the
bandits. Often the reverse occurs - the greater act of banditism
calls down repression upon the innocent population.

In order to give some help and shelter to the defenseless
population, I have issued an order- with the understanding of the
chief Delegate of the Government - to the commanders of regions and
districts regarding local security. I have ordered the commanders of
regions and districts, when necessary, to move with arms against
these plundering or subversive bandit elements. I emphasized the need
to liquidate the leaders of bands and not efforts to destroy entire
bands. I recommended to the local commanders assuring the cooperation
of the local population and of the representative of the Government's
Delegate in organizing self-defense and of a warning system.
(Piotrowski 324)